Modern healthcare facilitates the ability for patients to lead healthy and full lives. Implantable medical devices (IMDs) are often utilized for such medical advances. For example, IMDs such as pacemakers, implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), cardiac re-synchronization therapy (CRT) devices, neurostimulators, and drug pumps can facilitate management with a wide range of ailments, including, but not limited to, cardiac arrhythmias, diabetes, and Parkinson's disease.
The sophistication of IMDs is evolving to provide for advanced computing and telemetry capabilities. The latest IMDs support delivery of telemetry for remote monitoring and programming over various-range, high-bandwidth wireless links, and emerging devices will communicate with other interoperating IMDs. For example, many modern IMDs are configured to be responsive to on-demand telemetry communication requests from external devices after implantation. These requests generally prompt the IMD to establish a telemetry connection with the external device to allow the external device to read data collected from the IMD, to program the IMD, or to control operation of the IMD. After the external device has received the requested data or otherwise successfully completed programming of the IMD, the external device and the IMD can disable the telemetry connection to reduce power consumption associated with maintaining the connection and render the IMD available for establishing a new telemetry connection with the external device or another external device.
There are a number of scenarios that can slow data communication between an IMD and external device after establishing a telemetry connection. For example, after an IMD and an external device have established a telemetry connection, either device may not be able to transmit or receive data from the other due to interference, movement of the respective devices out of transmission range, or a development error. However, even though little or no data is successfully communicated in these scenarios, the respective devices maintain the connection, resulting in a waste of power and preventing the IMD from establishing another potentially viable connection. Accordingly, systems, apparatus, methods and computer-readable storage media that minimize maintenance of stalled telemetry connections with external devices are desired.